Don't Miss


Home   >   Market - Finance   >   Finance   >   New uniform account number takes-off June

New uniform account number takes-off June

By on April 30, 2011

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has released Uniform Bank account number (NUBAN) to Nigeria commercial banks for the purpose of full implementation to achieve uniform customer bank account in the country.

In a memo to the commercial banks posted on its website, the apex bank said NUBAN has great potentials to resolve the observed problems with electronic payments in Nigeria, saying that many of them are related to specification of wrong beneficiary account numbers.

The apex bank said there was the need for a number of operational modalities to be released to the market by the CBN to facilitate smooth and successful implementation of the scheme. According to the recommendation of the Cheques and ACH Working Group (CAWG), the approved NUBAN format ABC-DEFGHIJKL-M where ABC is the 3-digit bank code assigned by the CBN DEFGHIJKL is the NUBAN Account serial number M is the NUBAN Check Digit, required for account number validation .

The apex bank, however, advised all Deposit Money Banks to adopt this uniform algorithm to obtain the check digit component of the NUBAN codes of their customer account numbers.

It further said the mode of transition from the present situation to the NUBAN scheme has to be handled carefully to ensure the success of the scheme. The proposal also stated that the NUBAN codes should be communicated to existing customers as soon as the codes become available, and added that the owners of all new bank accounts opened from January 01, 2011, should be provided with NUBAN codes at the onset.

It said the NUBAN scheme required that the account number field in the cheque MICR code line should feature only NUBAN numbers. It also said all new cheques issued to customers should carry NUBAN codes